Derek Holland's Political Soldier has been a best-seller in radical nationalist, Third Positionist circles since it first appeared in 1984. The 24 page pamphlet is crucial to understanding the pseudo-spiritual direction in which neo-fascists have trended, including their desire to co-opt Christian (including Catholic) social issues through a strategy of infiltration.
An energetically written piece of agitprop The Political Soldier paints an exciting picture of a "spiritual struggle" for "national revolution." The Political Soldier borrows occasional phrases from religious authors like G. K. Chesterton and Thomas à Kempis. Nevertheless, what is not said about religion is just as important. In 1994, Derek Holland added a new preface to the tenth anniversary edition, dropping in references to "sin," "faith," and "God." Yet nowhere does he discuss the Christian faith itself, since he clearly so much at odds with it.
The following excerpts are illustrative:
[W]hat is needed above all else is a fundamental shift in attitude towards struggle, towards life, towards destiny; that there cannot be, and will not be, any serious change in the overall direction taken by the countries of Europe until the New Man, like a giant on the horizon, capable of moulding and inspiring a New Social Order...The last public pronouncement by Holland on the Political Soldier appears in the March 2002 issue of Deutsche Stimme, the journal of the NPD (a rough translation of "Theory and Strategy: The Path of the Political Soldier" is available via Google). He remains connected to Third Position politics via the St. George Educational Trust which was founded by the ITP in the early 1990s and which is affiliated with the Legion of St. Louis.
... Europe does not have a monopoly on Political Soldiers and all peoples and cultures have the potential to produce this type of man, each fitted to his peculiar circumstances. Take for example the Islamic Revolutionary Guards in the Iran of the Mullahs.... Their belief in their Cause is so strong that they will run through minefields unarmed to attack enemy positions.... This power drove the Yankee war machine out of the Lebanon - whilst U.S. troops were fighting for job security, a wage packet and a pension, their opponents in the Revolutionary Guards were fighting for an Ideal, an independent Iranian Iran.
It is the task of the Political Soldier to promote the Will to live by revealing the true nature of life - as opposed to the materialist nightmare of this century which is mistakenly taken to be "life" - and by living this life. In order to do this the Political Soldier must undergo a Spiritual Revolution, an inner revolution which guides, directs and pervades his life.
